#interesting mammals

[whatnext10]

Armadillos Don’t See Well, but They Have a Great Nose

Taking a Break On one of my recent trips to Watermelon Pond a pretty little nine banded armadillo (Dasypus novemcinctus) found me. I was hiking through the woods towards the water when it happened along. I say it found me because it came out of some heavy underbrush into the more open area where I was walking. It looked around, never saw me, and began to follow its nose around in search for some…

[sparrowlucero]

Have you seen the live action HTTYD designs? what do you think?

Honestly I think people are being a bit harsh on them. The big pitfalls I usually see with realistic reimaginings of animated/illustrated creatures is that they either just try to copy the design 1:1, seemingly without a lot of understanding of anatomy/style, or go the opposite direction and treat everything as cartoon exaggeration, toning down or removing features that exist in the real world for the sake of realism. most of these are basically fine on both counts, it looks like the character designers are actually trying to engage with what the original designs are communicating while also not forcing themselves to be 100% fidelic to them. Most of these are not bad designs to me. I will say I 1) don't like the zippleback; maybe it looks better in movement but off the first few images it seems like they just kind of ditched all the interesting (and genuinely reptilian) elements of the original, like it's alligator/lizard-like stance and the way it's spines look like a zipper, in favor of a pretty generic/less visually interesting design:

and 2) I mentioned before I'm really not big on the redesign toothless has throughout the animated movies; the sequels gave him an increasingly flatter, more humanish face with big "eyebrows" and I think it looks way less cute/less like a real animal. the live action design is very obviously referencing this later design and I think it looks pretty rough here too, honestly a bit uncanny valley:

side note: i always thought my harshness on this design choice was a kind of mean hot take but the other day i went into the httyd tumblr tag and man they are so much meaner than me. look at this

[doglover43]

the cretan hound

i was shocked when i was unable to find very much information on this breed considering their remarkable history! originating out of greece, the cretan hound currently holds the record for being the oldest european dog breed, dating all the way back to 3200 BCE and neolithic time periods! they were commonly depicted in minosean seal stones, ceramics, and even small sculptures!

[serpentface]

The wassibi, threatening you with a very bad time.

Wassibi are mid-sized (11-16 lb) solitary mustelids. This species is native throughout the lands south of the Viper seaway, thriving as generalists in a great diversity of habitats (though rarely occur in very arid environments or at high elevations). They are omnivores, using their broad noses and strong claws to dig out earthworms, beetle larvae, roots and tubers, foraging along the ground for insects, scorpions, bird eggs, fallen fruit, and small lizards and snakes, and occasionally scavenging carcasses and trash. They are particularly noted for their ability to find honey- splitting open bees nests with their claws and leisurely consuming larvae and honeycomb, seemingly untroubled by bee stings.

Wassibi are known above all else for their devastatingly noxious defensive anal gland spray. When threatened, they hiss, arch their backs and tails, raise their fur, and point their anus menacingly in the direction of danger. Should posturing fail, they will unleash their spray at the threat's face. Their anal glands have powerful muscular control and the attack is devastatingly accurate at up to 10 ft. In addition to having an atrocious stench, the liquid is mildly irritating to the skin, painful and temporarily blinding to the eyes, and can induce intense nausea and vomiting. The smell is resistant to washing, and can take weeks to fade. Most predators who experience a hit will learn to recognize the wassibi's stark aposematic coloring and avoid anything resembling it.

In addition to this potent defensive weaponry, they have dense fur and thick, loose skin, which renders them difficult for most predators to effectively grasp or pierce without risk of being bitten themselves. As such, wassibi have few consistent natural predators and are given a wide birth by most other animals. Their tendency to walk boldly in the open and sometimes even scavenge at carcasses alongside much larger predators commonly lends them cultural reputations of fearlessness. Wassibi are known for attacking large venomous snakes that potentially threaten their young, which (along with their frequent consumption of scorpions and bees) leads to common misconceptions that they are entirely immune to venom. They have no such resistance, rather their thick fur and loose skin cause bites and stings to land less effectively- most stings fail to penetrate their fur altogether, and bites often deal glancing blows that inject little to no venom.

Their biggest predatory threats come from humans. Wassibi meat is fairly rich and not unappealing to most palates used to wild game, but they are rarely considered worth the effort and risk of killing for consumption alone. They are more commonly hunted for their pelts (worn commonly by Wogan and North Wardi herders in hopes of deterring attacks from predators), bones, claws, and fat (used in traditional medicine for their purported antivenom properties). This hunting is fairly limited in scope overall, and most Wassibi populations remain stable.

[respect-the-locals]

🐬 Daily Cetacean Fact: 🐬

Pygmy Killer Whale: The pygmy killer whale is a poorly known and rarely seen oceanic dolphin. It derives its common name from sharing some physical characteristics with the Orca. It is the smallest cetacean species that has the word "whale" in its common name. Although the species has been known to be extremely aggressive in captivity, this aggressive behavior has not been observed in the wild.

[blujayonthewing]

if they weren't cowards. dwarves would exhibit zero sexual dimorphism

[quill-of-thoth]

Today I learned emergency stabilization for kittens. (And also puppies, other small baby mammals) Mostly, admittedly, from popping in every five seconds while answering phones, because work has two veterinarians and a vet tech on staff and no other live patients.

In order from easiest to hardest: 1) Keep kitten warm: We have a handy incubator set to a reasonable mammalian body temp, so we popped him in there while we found the rest of the supplies. For those of you without, towels that have been cooked in the dryer and bottles of tap warm (NOT HOTTER) water. 2) Glucose: We had an individual package of "honey" that is really just corn syrup. This is not a meal, it's just to make sure the body has something in it to run on

3) Water: hydrate carefully, small drops if the animal seems to be able to swallow.

4) Milk: once kitten was making suckling motions consistently when honey or water was applied to his mouth, we made a run to the animal shelter next door for a can of kitten milk replacer. This one may be harder to get for people not working in vetmed / some sort of animal industry that would have it on hand. And honestly if we hadn't been the workplace with the experts we would have had to take him to the shelter before this just to find a veterinarian. So if you find a small animal yourself that doesn't seem stable you will probably not make it to this step.

5) DO NOT DO THIS if you are not trained in administering needles or do not have sterile saline on hand, but my boss was able to give the kitten subcutaneous saline. Like an IV for a creature too small and wrinkly to have an IV-able vein. Our kitten was pretty far gone when we got him so this is probably what made the difference: my boss started saline as soon as we got him up past room temperature and he started making noises.

[front-facing-pokemon]

[the-worms-in-your-bones]

Having a normal time (debating on whether or not time lords can be classified as mammals)

[smellybead]

Leopard seal stuff from the past couple of days hehedhfejbubefu4hehebehy4

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[imadhatt3r]

Tbh, out of all animals, it makes sense for marsupials like quokkas to be the animals chosen to be featured in DS2, since, you know, marsupials have a pouch where they carry the fetus? They don't carry it in their uterus for the whole pregnancy? Kinda like how you do with a BB...?

[crybaby-bkg]

just read from my psych of sex class that studies show exotic dancers who did lap dances while ovulating received more tips than those who were on birth control and ovulating. this is giving me many thoughts will return later 🏃🏽‍♂️

[partofmeee]

Look what I found under my Crepe Myrtles...

[vimbry-moved]

just honest to god adore those deconstructed concepts in the lyrics like "glass of milk, standing in-between extinction in the cold" as a descriptor for mammals and the function they're named for, "flammable undiagrammable sentiments pass between animal beings" to mean sparks fly during romantic chemistry, and "newborn citizenship of the micronations" referring to reproducing and new offspring, like. like! like!!!

[ace-and-ranty]

Saw one of them Reddit posts, "What food makes you think, 'How did humans figure out this was edible?!'"

Plenty of cool answers, mainly discussing highly toxic foods that need a lot of processing to be safe.

And then a bunch of people said milk.

MILK.

You are wondering how we figured out. We could drink milk.

HOW DID MAMMALS.

FIGURED OUT.

WE COULD DRINK.

MILK.